As of yesterday, Russell Vought had tweeted exactly fifteen times since being confirmed as Donald Trump’s director of Office of Management and Budget (OMB) on February 6, including twice about balancing the federal budget, twice about Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (“DOGE”) agency, and six times about the evils of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). One of those six times was on Sunday, when Vought celebrated that his dismantling of the Wall Street watchdog had rescued an obscure company from dire straits.
“Shockingly, the CFPB tried to destroy this company, SoLo, which incurred millions in legal fees and had to lay off 30 percent of its workforce,” Vought tweeted. “It was wrong and we dismissed the case.”
As many Twitter/X users rushed to point out, the company Vought was lauding as an “innovative solution” for helping “working-class Americans with limited means” deal with large, unexpected costs was, in reality, little more than a scandal-plagued payday lender. At first glance, it seems like a vintage move from Vought’s playbook: let corporate greed run riot, cynically tell people that the regulations holding predatory firms in check that you just eliminated were “woke and weaponized,” and assume Americans will be gullible enough to swallow this.
But it’s actually worse than that, because SoLo is also alleged to be exactly the kind of “woke” entity “weaponized” against working Americans that Vought normally rails against when he needs an excuse to put Americans out of work or cut off their health care.
SoLo is meant to be a techified cross between a payday and microlender, connecting people who have spare cash they can lend out with other people who need to borrow modest amounts at short notice. In practice, the firm is accused of being a predatory lender that has had legal action taken against it in at least five states, and was in the process of being sued by CFPB…
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
